Disinformation

The Warsaw Institute Review special edition is including the Report on organised and planned disinformation in Central and Eastern Europe, with special focus on the V4 countries, Ukraine and Baltic States.

The report includes the following parts:

identification of threats for V4 countries and societies resulting from organised and planned disinformation activities,

In recent years, organised disinformation has had a growing impact on today’s states and societies. Due to the ease of publishing any content in the Internet as well as universal access to the web, fake news may influence the attitudes and actions both of citizens and of decisionmakers. Disinformation is frequently targeted at traditional media and state institutions. Largescale disinformation may be a tool of aggressive policy of some countries, and it may even become an element of the hybrid war (see Russian aggression against Ukraine). This phenomenon is regularly present in the Visegrad Group countries, in particular in areas such as energy or defence policy.

Public opinion and state institutions need to find effective tools to protect themselves against disinformation. Therefore, we propose to integrate efforts towards this end at Central and Eastern European level. This project involve carrying out professional analyses on the identification and creation of methods for combating organised disinformation, as well as draft recommendations and good practices, and also guidelines for educational programmes that reach the citizens directly through public campaigns, as well as Internet tools for the public to protect themselves against unfair disinformation practice.

Designing an efficient programme for identifying threats caused by disinformation and developing counter strategies requires international cooperation, with participation of experts from various countries of the region. This will allow for making use of their unique experience and for performing expert analysis, based on different perspectives.

Cooperation between V4 countries will make it possible to exchange information and experience and to propose effective solutions, not for a single country and society, but for the entire CEE region.